This show aims to restore the Stupinigi Palazzina di Caccia (royal hunting palace) by decking it with the magnificence of its Baroque festivals with notes played in a contemporary key. Water, fire, pyrotechnic engines and music are the expressive elements that appeared at the royal festivities at Stupinigi in 1773, 1778, 1781, and several decades of the nineteenth century. The show is the history of fire from its origins up to the present day. It starts with the lightning bolt that started the first fire. It goes through the tribal rituals dedicated to fire, the divine flames of ancient Greece, and the invention of gunpowder. With gunpowder and its characteristic propulsive power, we see the rise of real pyrotechnics, which we trace through the later Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and the Baroque period. We come up to present days with airborne scenes and the great fireworks. The setting is the evocative space in Stupinigi Park. A lightning bolt sets three trees on fire, one after the other. Some people discover fire. They use it to celebrate their reverential rituals along with extraordinary dances and gripping rhythms. Here the members of the Ivory Cost national dance troupe play leading roles. Without rhyme or reason, the space is invaded by ninety vestals. They create an immense choreography that celebrates the new rituals using extremely high veils that serve as screens for Chinese-style shadow-theatre images. Each of the vestals has a torch. Forty-nine snuff them out in the sand. The fiftieth snuffs her torch downwards into the sand too, but sets off a powerful and spectacular explosion – gunpowder. Impressive Baroque scenes appear in the space. There are tongues of flames, wreaths, Colombina doves, butterflies, and Roman candles. All are strictly monochromatic – gold, silver, and white. Baroque pyrotechnics has begun. A costumed counter-tenor appears in the palace’s great windowed entrance. He goes down the stairway past the strategically placed Baroque statues. As the song approaches each of the figures, it lights little steady flames on each, one after the other. Now pieces of earth-moving equipment begin their manoeuvres, approaching the building and the audience. In the middle there is a great tractor-treaded Monster. Its excavating shovel has a lower jaw with pointed metallic teeth attached to it as well as two glowing eyes. These glow through the smoke that comes out of the monster. Meanwhile, incandescent threads dribble out of the Monster’s mouth like spit. Next to the monster there are two enormous derricks that raise and lower their great flaming mouths like enormous braziers. The Monster reaches the centre of the park. It lifts its heavy head, and lets out a yell that sets the twenty make-believe vestal virgins on fire, all at the same time. (This seems absolutely true to the audience.) There begins a frightening dance of the earth moving equipment. Excavators and derrick shovels are made to swing dizzyingly a few inches from each other. This sets off a real live battle among all the signs that are offered there. It is a danced-out and violent battle where fire sets off fire. It takes place among battle routes bordered by tanks placed on the ground and filled with inflammable liquids. When the fires have gone out, there is the slow agony of the Monster, seen through the smoke. The Monster puts his head on the ground. It then raises its heavy body up as if for a last breath, creating an unlikely fallen-apart figure that can make us feel a surge of tenderness. Meanwhile, in the sky there is the apotheosis of the great fireworks.